


Jump

by The_Asset6



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: 6x03 Fill-In, Bipolar Disorder, Gen, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 20:07:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28676433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Asset6/pseuds/The_Asset6
Summary: Fate. Destiny. Kismet.Screeching tires.Two lives in need of saving.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21





	Jump

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome! Please take note of the tags and rating before continuing. This was something that I couldn't get out of my head and wanted to put into words. As this deals heavily with Ian's mindset towards the start of s6, there are terms and arguments he uses that are not healthy. If this is something you struggle with, please proceed with caution or click that back button. :)

It was cold. The river rushed beneath the bridge, urgently flowing towards its rightful home in Lake Michigan.

That had to be nice: the conviction that you belonged somewhere that would be waiting to welcome you on the other side when you arrived.

Ian watched the turbulent current, dispassionate and distant as the water that paid him no mind on its ceaseless journey. It seemed like that was all he felt anymore except the rare occurrences where flames of anger and betrayal licked at his insides, begging him to entertain the raging inferno they longed to become. He might have if he’d been able to summon the energy. But he couldn’t. He just… He just couldn’t.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It wasn’t supposed to happen to _him_.

That wasn’t to say that he wanted any of his siblings to be saddled with Monica’s issues either, but even so, when was he going to catch a fucking break? He’d been rolling with the punches for so many years that he was battered and bruised, bloodied and beaten. That was the Gallagher way. Of course, it was. Recognizing that didn’t make it any easier to stomach.

Because it wasn’t supposed to be like this.

Ian’s plans had always been straightforward: finish high school, enlist in the military, serve his country, and retire with more to his name than when he’d entered. A few of his goals required adaptation, like West Point falling through or being stationed somewhere he didn’t care for. The milestones were there, however. The details should have fallen into place as the years passed, same as the plastic fast-food containers that bobbed along the surface of the river. He would have been a soldier, not a waste of space. He would have helped people, not required so much assistance himself. His name would have made his family proud, not worried or frustrated or sad as fuck.

The river was different. Nothing but a miracle could reverse its flow, and those were in short supply. It went one way, and in the face of unexpected obstacles, it remained steadfast. It kept going. Whatever endeavored to impede it could either surrender and ride the waves or accept its destruction underneath them.

Ian was simultaneously the impediment _and_ the destruction.

Nobody really understood that. His family got the gist—how could they not after watching Monica at her best and at her worst? They thought it was easy, though, that he could go back to being himself if he just popped a few pills and pretended that the last couple of years had never happened.

They were afraid _for_ him, but they should have been afraid _of_ him.

This wasn’t Frank worming his way into their lives whenever it benefited him, an outside force that they could identify, touch, and handle. Instead, it was an invisible clock inside Ian’s head. Someone had set the alarm without telling him, and he was going to spend the rest of his life on tenterhooks, treading lightly in case it went off and sent him spiraling through the dark abyss where he wanted to disappear into the universe or the bright neon one where he _was_ the universe. It was exhausting. He was so fucking _tired_ of everything.

Fiona’s mere presence was draining, physically and emotionally. When she wasn’t nagging him about taking his meds, she gave him shit for not being good enough at his job. What a joke. There was nothing to that dead-end position: he’d stacked dirty dishes, taken them to a giant sink, and wiped off the tables when he was finished. Anybody could do that. It was one step above being a maid, yet Ian was apparently doing it all wrong. He wasn’t fast enough or thorough enough or obedient enough. Who fucking cared? It wasn’t the army or anything. Lives weren’t on the line; people wouldn’t drop dead if he didn’t clear a table sooner. Why had he borne the brunt of her power trip from fucking the boss? Ian already had to live with the guy thanks to her, so the least she could do was cut him some slack at work. But no. Fiona wanted everything: for him to take his meds and be the perfect subservient underling and rubberstamp her crap with Debbie. Even after quitting that shithole, it was crushing him—gradually, agonizingly crushing him.

What he’d ended up doing wasn’t any better. In fact, although he’d never admit it where Fiona could hear him, it was infinitely worse. It was a _simple_ job for _simple_ people like Todd. Tod. Whatever. That was where Ian landed: mentally ill, mopping up puke and emptying garbage cans with the brain damaged. And what did the future hold for him? Today, he was emptying trash; forty years from now, he’d be cleaning bathrooms, waiting to die or hurrying it along as best he could.

The water was so loud in his ears. Fast. Brutal. Indifferent.

So was Lip. Genius Lip who’d been born with everything that the rest of them had to scrape for over the years. He got the brains and the relief that accompanied being straight in their neighborhood. Poetic irony didn’t steal from him the way it did Ian. Sure, he’d felt pretty hard done by with regards to Karen, but she was a raging bitch, and he was better off without her. The rough patch where Fiona had spectacularly self-destructed and left him holding the bag never seriously impacted his education, which was paid for on a free fucking ride. While Ian was on his knees with a toothbrush, bleaching the grout in every bathroom on campus, he would be living in some high-rise and pondering what to do with all his money.

Ian loved him. Lip was his best friend and always had been. They’d shared a room for as long as Ian had been alive, and not once—not _once_ —had Lip ever let him down.

Until today.

A crash erupted below as the current drove a wave into the concrete supports. It wasn’t enough to rock the bridge, but Ian was so numb that he wouldn’t have felt it anyway.

In a sense, he got it. Lip was older, right? He’d been away from home, making a life for himself, just like Ian had tried to do by enlisting. That was what he called normal now. Why would he want to share his space with his fucked up little brother? What he’d said was true: he’d earned it. It wasn’t his job to look after Ian or give him someplace to go when home was a shitshow and he had nowhere else to turn. That wasn’t on him any more than it was his duty to step in when his teacher was a dick or make Ian feel less like a moron listening to him and his friend go on about a stupid cat. Getting upset about it was Ian’s problem. It was his fault for never realizing that this would happen. His entire life, there had never been a time where he’d been forced to accept that one day he would go to Lip and…Lip wouldn’t be there.

Nobody was, really. Mickey was in prison for trying to kill Sammi, and Ian couldn’t bring himself to greedily drag him down too even if he wasn’t. Lip was doing his own thing, telling him to go back to high school as though it were that simple when Ian could barely muster the will to get out of bed most days. Fiona expected him to be someone whose skin he didn’t fit into like he once did, Debbie was obsessed with having a kid, and Carl was so Carl that he wasn’t Carl anymore.

Ian _had_ to do this on his own, but he had no idea what he was even _doing_. He had no goals. He had no plans. They’d been shattered by a doctor and the little orange pill bottles on his nightstand. They were paperclipped into a folder that would never see the light of day, forever buried and forgotten in the army’s records. They languished in a cell, fused to the rusty legs of the school desks where he used to sit, and leapt into the back of a truck with Monica to go wherever the wind took them.

Good riddance. What was the point?

The clock was ticking. He couldn’t hear it. He couldn’t see it. He couldn’t touch it. But it was ticking. Eventually, the alarm would go off, and any goal he was dumb enough to tentatively claim for himself would be swept away by the raging flood.

Ian used to wake up every morning and do two hundred push-ups before going to school. Now, his arms trembled if he picked up too many dishes in one load.

Ian used to be hardcore for ROTC. Now, there was an enormous, inescapable disclaimer above his name in any database the army checked: _bipolar, unfit for service._

Ian wanted to be a soldier. Now, he was a failed busboy and a botched janitor.

Ian knew who he was and where he was going once upon a time. Now, all he could be sure of was that he’d be a piece of shit like Monica.

Could the water wash that away? Or was he so dirty that he’d never be clean?

It was cold.

The river rushed beneath the bridge, frightening and enticing and threatening and inviting.

Then tires screeched against the asphalt, and Ian felt the flow reverse.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> For more on Shameless, my writing, and assorted fandom madness, I'm on [Tumblr](https://pathoftheranger.tumblr.com/)!


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